See you on Thursday

Callers are prepared to call dances to the Christmasy tunes Jingle Bells, 12 days of Christmas, Y Gelynnen (the Holly Tree), and others.
I've made us a Christmas cake, maybe there will be other snacks too.

A final meeting

Thurs November 29th will be our last meeting.

Thanks to all those who supported us, we just didn't quite have enough since most of us can't make it every time. So I shall not continue into the new year.

The evenings we had over 2 dozen really buzzed, under a dozen we struggled. Most evenings were somewhere in between; marginal I thought.

So on Nov 29th  (the 5th Thurs in Nov.) I'll book the room from 8 - 10.30, we'll play and dance, and finish with a cuppa and a slice of Christmas cake. (If anyone else wants to bring a plate of food it would be welcome.)

Hope to see you all, lets go out with a bang.

Our November meeting

Since we can't meet on the third Thursday in November, and last year people were too busy for a meeting in December we are meeting on the 5th Wednesday in November as our Christmas 'do'. We might add a few Carol tunes to our list.

Tunes for 18th Oct

 I have chosen these from our collection

Grimstock

Basque Stick dance

Ploughboy

Grandfather's Clock

Moon and Seven Stars

Rattling bog

If you would like a pdf of any of these tunes, arranged by Marilyn, they are on http://www.blackcatband.co.uk/Tunes/
Please print them if you play from the dots.

 Marilyn has made midi files. If you would like to hear the tunes  email me mjw@mowaddington.plus.com and I'll send you all or any of them and your computer can play them to you.

If there is time for more dances we will play other tunes from our list

Tunes for Sep 20th

We will play

Maggie in the Wood
My Grandfather's Clock
Quem Pastores
Falmouth Polka
Boil em Cabbage down

a couple more to be added when callers let me know - possibly the Basque Stick Dance.
If time the Curly Headed Ploughboy

See you there. Let me know if you would like midi files to play the tunes on your computer. Dots for the version we play are on Marilyns site http://www.blackcatband.co.uk/Tunes/

A snag for November

The room will be used as a polling station so we will change the date or cancel. Let me know your preference

Looking forward

Our next meetings are September 20th, Oct 18th, and Nov 15th.

In September we will play Maggie in the Wood, and others that the callers choose.

June 21st

We WILL meet on June 21st.
No time for new tunes, we will repeat those we've played before.

June meeting

Still no news about the date. We will only meet if we can have June 21st.

Write a Dance

I was running a workshop at Chester Festival. At the workshop we talked about various aspects of dancing, calling and dance writing. We tried out some fragments of dances and one complete new dance. Here it is 
         
           Reconciliation

Chorus

   A1 Circle left, circle right

  A2 Circle right circle left

Head couples start most figures by facing couple on the right to form diagonal lines. Chains etc. are half way.

Figure 1 (Lady strays)

B1 Ladies chain half way man turns lady enough (three quarters or one and a quarter) to face on the other diagonal. Ladies chain again and face on the original diagonal.

B2  Repeat. (The ladies have visited each man and are back with partner)

Chorus A1 & A2 Circle left, right, right and left.

Figure 2 (Man strays)

B1& B2 Flutter wheel with couple on first diagonal, * finish this with new man facing on the other diagonal.  After 3 more flutter wheels men are home with partner having visited all the ladies.

Chorus A1 & A2 Circle left, right, right and left. Face partner.

Figure 3 (both go their own way)

B1 & B2 Grand chain all the way, when you meet partner in own place there should be time for a quick swing.

Chorus A1 & A2 Circle left, right, right and left.

Figure 4 (reconciliation)

B1 Right and left through on first diagonal, courtesy turn your partner to face on other diagonal, right and left through.

B2 repeat to home place.

*From http://round.soc.srcf.net/dances/elements 

Flutter Wheel

A less common American dance term. It is similar to a half ladies chain, but swaps the men instead of swapping the women. Starting from two facing couples the women do a half right hand turn, and then complete the turn after collecting the other man's right hand in their left. The men have to start moving before they get collected so the women can keep moving smoothly to do a full right hand turn.

June causes problems this year too

After much dithering I thought it might be a good idea to meet in June. But the Deaf Centre can not let me know if the room is available till after the Bank Holiday.
Watch this space.

We had another good evening. Not as packed as last time, but there was no lack of qualtity.
Those of us who struggle to keep up with the tunes (you can have all the notes slowly or a selection at dance speed, from me) are very grateful that we have some good players to keep us together and up to the mark.

Elaine brought a Basque stick dance and tune which we had fun with.
We also danced the Playford dance Grimstock from 1651, a regency dance The Duke of Kent's Waltz, a modern dance to a C14 carol tune, and the dance Pat's Tradition, written by a Dutchman in honour of an English dance writer and set to a Scottish tune . One of our callers learnt that one at a Welsh weekend - dances do get around.

Next meeting Thursday May 17th

I have started pestering our callers for  the tunes they want us to play.
One has offered to call Grimstock, so we'll have another go at that (we played it at our first meeting, a year ago)

A visit from the Beech Band

Well we never got round to that new tune last night because the caller who wanted it wasn't there. If she had been we'd have been pushed for time because we had a visit from a group that play at the Beech, Chorlton and they called a couple of dances for us.
One of their members has been 'working towards' calling a dance. Well, we provided the dancers and the encouragement (no, I don't bully people into doing things) and he called one last night.

It made a lively evening having them there to exchange tunes and dances with.

We would like to welcome anyone who wants to try their hand at calling (or playing or dancing), contact me for more details.

We have one more meeting before our summer break May 17th, then resume in September. We will play that tune in May, even if I have to call the dance myself.

New tune for next week

Next meeting is April 19th (next Thursday)
We will be playing a new tune
My Wife's a Wanton Wee Thing
You can download or dots from http://www.blackcatband.co.uk/Tunes/, and watch a video of the dance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9026vlPB6do&feature=share . I think we will play it slightly slower, we are aiming at about 110bpm, I can send you a midi if you ask mjw@mowaddington.plus.com . If you want a really slow 'practise speed' version there is a midi on http://abcnotation.com/tunePage?a=abc.sourceforge.net/NMD/nmd/jigs.txt/0334 but we'd fall over if we tried to dance that slowly.

We will also be playing

Moon and seven stars for Domino 5

Bear Dance for Whale bones

Oyster Girl for Heptathlon

Boil em Cabbage down for Ken's dance

More to follow, watch this space.
See you.

Our March meeting

Two more meetings before the summer break

At our March meeting the musicians found that they had to get up and dance as a lot of the dancers were busy with various other things.

We are having 2 more meetings, April 19th and May 17th, then we'll break untill September.

See you tonight

We are planning to dance
Heptathlon to the tune Oyster Girl;
Morgan Magan, a dance written in 2000 by Ken Sheffield to the tune the C17 Irish harper Carolan;
Dorset Four Hand Reel;
dances set to the tunes
Oats, Beans and Barley;
We will Down With the French (a tune from the time of the Napoleonic wars, not a headline from the Sun)
Chinese Breakdown;
and possibly Duke of Kents waltz and/or Rufty Tufty.

Another tune for next Thursday

Marilyn has added Dorset Four Hand Reel to the tunes on her website. Please download if you play from the dots from http://www.blackcatband.co.uk/Tunes/
We will also be playing Rufty Tufty, Duke of Kent's Waltz, Oats Beans & Barley, Falmouth Polka, Horses Brawl AABB (with no Cs) and others from our list.
If you want a midi to hear any tune, email me

Tunes for 19th

Marilyn has put a new Playford tune up for us. Rufty Tufty. Print the dots from http://www.blackcatband.co.uk/Tunes/
Joan is going to call the dance Horse Play again, sorry folks, Gary Roodman wrote the dance to for just the first two parts of Horses Brawl, so thats AABB and no Cs. At least we don't get clashes between different versions of the C part.

Happy New Year

See you on Jan 19th, bring all your friends to play, dance and call with us.
We hope to preview Val's newly written dance.
We will be playing Horses Brawl with two of everything this time.
And more, as the callers recover from the festivities and tell us which tunes they need.